This year was
already set to go down as a turning point in the history of Europe’s
undeclared war against illegal immigration. And now the November 13
attacks in Paris have thrown fuel on an already incendiary debate.

The unprecedented
collective disobedience of migrants crossing borders en masse
subjected the “fortress” model of border enforcement the EU so
painstakingly constructed over the last three decades to
unprecedented moral and political pressure. The chaotic and tragic
consequences of Europe’s ‘managed migration’ policies have
called into question the effectiveness — and the morality — of
the European model, and revealed deep divisions within the European
Union over how the continent should respond to what NGOs and refugee
organizations have called the most serious humanitarian crisis since
World War II.

Now, as a result of
Islamic State’s vicious assault on the French capital, there is a
real danger that these tentative openings in the ‘fortress’ model
of border enforcement will be closed once again, as renewed concern
with border security becomes another justification for the exclusion
of people who had nothing to do with last weekend’s horrific
events.

Since Germany took
the decision to open its borders and receive 800,000 refugees — a
gesture at odds with the entire direction of European immigration
policy over the last three decades — Angela Merkel’s ‘moral
imperialism’ has come under increasing criticism from Eastern
European governments and from within her own party. Though other
countries refused to follow Germany’s call to accept quotas of
refugees, even anti-immigrant governments came under pressure this
summer as solidarity with Europe’s migrants became increasingly
vocal and widespread

* * *

To understand the
potential repercussions of the current crisis, we need to go back 30
years to the village of Schengen, in Luxembourg, where the interior
ministers of France, Germany, and the Benelux countries gathered on
June 14, 1985, and signed a treaty to abolish their mutual border
controls. The signatories thought of the Schengen Agreement as a
giant, even utopian, step towards European unity.

Today the free
movement zone that they created has expanded to include 26 countries
and enables some 420 million Europeans to live and work anywhere in
this common space of ‘freedom, security, and justice.’ It also
allows non-European nationals with the three-month Schengen Visa to
travel across the continent with the same ease.

There was always
another, less utopian dimension to Schengen. Dismantling national
borders within was contingent on the reinforcement of the EU’s
“external” borders. Bureaucratic restrictions on legal entry were
accompanied by a host of measures to prevent illegal immigration: the
deployment of quasi-military forces and surveillance technologies on
land and sea; the construction of physical barriers at key border
hotspots; a new emphasis on immigrant detention; conveyor belt
deportations; the outsourcing of Europe’s immigration controls to
neighboring countries like Libya, Morocco and Ukraine — all these
measures formed what would become one of the most extensive and
sustained immigration enforcement programs in history.

* * *

The new Schengen
borders came under political pressure as Eastern European states
baulked at the EU’s attempts to resettle some 160,000 refugees
across the continent, and erected new fences and barriers at their
nominally open borders. Now this cornerstone of the European project
has begun to crumble, as governments and rightwing populists across
the continent have seized on the attacks as a justification for the
re-imposition of national border controls, and the strengthening or
even the closing of Europe’s external borders.

Within hours of the
attacks in Paris the tone was set by Poland’s European Affairs
Minister Konrad Szymanski, who declared: “The European Council’s
decisions, which we criticized, on the relocation of refugees and
immigrants to all EU countries are part of European law. After the
tragic events of Paris we do not see the political possibility of
respecting them.” In Holland, Freedom Party leader Gert Wilders has
called on the government to ‘close the Dutch borders’ in order to
‘protect the Dutch people.’ In France Marine Le Pen has similarly
called upon the French government to ‘take back’ control of its
borders and stop accepting refugees.

The eagerness with
which Europe’s populist and nationalist right and the right-wing
media have seized upon the Paris attacks as a justification for
dismantling Schengen and excluding refugees is unedifying, if not
exactly surprising. In his address to the joint houses of Parliament
at Versailles, François Hollande warned of the dangers of a return
to nationalism and “the dismantling of the European Union,”
should Europe prove unable to control its external borders.

Coming from the
leader of one of the principal architects of the European Union,
Hollande’s attempt to link border control and security to the wider
question of immigration enforcement has troubling implications for
Europe’s refugees, and for the future of Europe itself. From its
earliest stages, the hardening of Europe’s external borders against
undocumented migration was seen as an essential barrier against an
array of security threats that included drugs, terrorism, sexual
trafficking or disease.

These tendencies
were intensified by the post 9/11 emergency, as European governments
routinely linked border control to wider questions of terrorism and
counter-terrorism. That borders can perform an important role in law
enforcement and protecting the public is undeniable, but the notion
of ‘strong’ or ‘controlled’ borders raises expectations for
security that cannot be met at the border itself. Terrorists do not
generally enter the countries they want to attack as asylum seekers
on boats or dinghies — they are likely to cross borders legally
with forged identities, their intentions well concealed.

This should be
obvious, yet too often governments present their electorates with a
notion of ‘control’ that would be difficult even for a
totalitarian state to achieve. Too often politicians conflate
security with the prevention of undocumented migration, to the point
when ‘economic migrants’ and refugees are regarded as dangerous
and harmful people and another form of contraband. This tendency to
see immigration through the prism of security is widespread, and has
frequently called Europe’s commitment to refugee protection into
question.

The European Union
and its member states may have been committed to refugee protection
in principle, but new physical barriers, such as the towering border
fences in the Spanish exclaves of Ceuta and Melilla in Morocco, and
bureaucratic ‘paper walls’ that prevent refugees from getting on
planes have made it difficult, if not impossible, for refugees to
reach European territory and access this right in practice.

* * *

The grim
consequences of this border regime have been evident for many years,
in the horrific journeys of ‘boat-people’ across the
Mediterranean and the Aegean that produced a string of appalling
tragedies; in the spectacular growth of the smuggling industry and
sexual trafficking networks; in the proliferation of shantytowns and
camps in Calais, Italy, Greece and other countries where migrants
live in legal limbo.

The past 10 months
have exposed the moral and political contradictions at the heart of
Europe’s migration policies. We all have heard the staggering
numbers: 740,000 migrants seeking refuge in Europe; 218,000 new
arrivals last month alone; and more than 2,600 people drowned in the
Mediterranean and the Aegean. A majority of arrivals are Syrians and
should automatically qualify for refugee protection, yet many are
subjected to systematic police violence and repression in a number of
European countries.

Across the
continent, refugees are herded onto trains and buses, held in
internment camps and left stranded at border ‘hot spots’ and
migrant choke points, as borders closed and others opened. It is
difficult to see how Europe’s borders can be tightened even
further, without perpetuating the deaths, drownings and other tragic
events that we have already seen too many of this year. A number of
right-wing politicians and newspapers have cited the Syrian passport
found near one of the Paris suicide bombers as a vindication of their
previous reluctance to take in refugees, and a justification for
excluding Syrian refugees in the future.

Such arguments are
at best misguided and at worst entirely spurious and opportunistic.
Not only is the authenticity of this document questionable, but it is
also to some extent irrelevant. In today’s world, passports are
easily bought and forged, and no amount of ‘control’ at the
border can prevent that, unless certain nationalities are to be
excluded completely.

It remains to be
seen whether Europe is frightened enough to succumb to the populist
notion of security that would exclude all Syrian refugees. Needless
to say, such a course of action would have terrible consequences for
a refugee population that includes many victims of ISIL.

Most refugees who
manage to scale the hurdles of Europe’s borders and enter the
Schengen won’t find a ‘space of freedom, security, and justice.’
Instead, they’ll live in the permanent insecurity of camps and
shelters in Calais, Lesvos and other border ‘hot spots.’

We cannot allow our
security fears to become a pretext to perpetuate the permanent
insecurity of the men, women and children who risk and too often lose
their lives while trying to cross these European borders. If we are
vulnerable, they are too. ISIL knows this very well and would like
nothing better than to see them turned back towards its dismal
‘caliphate’ by a cold, vengeful and paranoid Europe.

This summer the
gates of Fortress Europe opened briefly. We must not compound the
tragedy in Paris and allow them to be slammed shut again. If that
happens, then Europe would effectively renounce the political
identity that its more idealistic founders once imagined, and revert
back to a handful of walled fortresses whose inhabitants were as
fearful of each other as they were of the outside world. The
restoration of these old borders might protect us from real and
imagined threats, but if that happens the mass murderers who wrought
such havoc on the streets of a peaceful city last Friday will have
achieved a far greater victory than they could ever have imagined.

Matt Carr is a
freelance journalist and the author of “Fortress Europe: Inside the
War Against Immigration” and “The Infernal Machine: An
Alternative History of Terrorism,” both published by Hurst.